Outsourcing of Production Systems : “Exploring the relation between Production Systems and Outsourcing Strategies”

Outsourcing of production is an emerging trend, due to the tight labor market, and the new Lisbon strategy. Although a lot of research is performed on outsourcing decision factors, a clear framework which enveloped the entire production system is lacking. The purpose of this research is to address this gap, and to explore the relation between production systems and outsourcing strategies. Due to the high variety of production systems and outsourcing strategies, an abstract level of research has been chosen. This has resulted in de following central question: “What is the relationship between outsourcing strategies and production systems?” Four outsourcing strategies can be distinguished: (1) in-house, (2) captive off-shoring, (3) outsourcing, (4) off-shore outsourcing (Volberda, Van den Bosch, Jansen, Szczygielska, & Roza, 2007). These strategies differ in the extent of ownership and control. Furthermore, they differ in the actual location of production. The production systems are regarded as the independent variables, and are divided into: (1) organizational characteristics, (2) managerial characteristics, (3) physical characteristics. A quantitative research approach is used for this research, which consisted of two parts. The first part consisted of a survey research, and has been accomplished in cooperation with FME-CWM. The surveys are randomly sent to profit making production organizations, which were members of FME-CWM. In total, 1164 organizations have been invited to contribute to this research. With 22 responses, a low response rate was obtained. For this reason, organizations on the InfraTech fair 2009 were approached to cooperate. Through a combination of face-to-face interviews and the survey, 4 new respondents were acquired. From the 26 respondents in total, 18 were useful for this research.